Friday, January 11, 2013

Will long space missions make us lethargic?

What kind of effects would a prolonged space mission have on
people? To date, only four people have spent more than a year in space. Six
people have, however, spent 520 days enclosed in the Mars500 simulator. During
that time, they were isolated from all outside contact, except by means that
would be accessible in space (including communication delays).

Among the things lacking during their seventeen-month
mission was any degree of privacy. The six men had their movements, activity
level and wakefulness continuously monitored by wrist devices. In addition, each person was given an alertness test twice a week
and a questionnaire about workload, tiredness and sleep quality once a week.

Four of the six crewmembers experienced some type of sleep
problem, such as poor sleep quality or disruptions of their wake/sleep cycles.
As the mission progressed, the volunteers spent less and less time in ‘active
wakefulness’. The rest of the time, they were either asleep or sedentary. The
drop in activity level was precipitous during the first three months, but
continued to fall until the last twenty days of the mission, at which time
everyone seemed to perk up. On the plus side, the extra sleep seemed to help
the crew maintain alertness when they were awake, because their scores on those
tests improved as their sleep time increased. This might be a lesson for all of us.

This mission highlighted a number of issues, as far as sleep
goes. For one thing, it’s clear that different people have different reactions
to prolonged isolation. Two of the crewmembers developed such skewed sleep
rhythms that they were offset (asleep when the other four were awake or vice
versa) twenty percent of the time. For another, the increasing amounts of
inactivity as the mission progressed could be problematic in a real mission,
especially if that quiescence reflects boredom or apathy.

Stochastic Scientist? What's up with that?

Why the Stochastic Scientist? As I'm sure you all know, 'stochastic' is another word for 'random', which is what I intend for the focus of this blog. Although my formal training is as a molecular biologist, there are many other fields of science that are also fascinating and beautiful. It's my intention to blog about which ever scientific discovery or invention catches my, and hopefully your, fancy.

I also hope to inspire people to learn more about science. By choosing among a huge variety of scientific endeavors, I'll undoubtably hit upon something that will pique my readers' interest.

I guess I could have called my blog 'The Joy of Science', but that wouldn't have been quite so random.